Family of Royal Marine killed-in-action: 'Tony Blair should go to jail over Iraq War'

George Bush and Tony Blair should go to jail, according to the family of a Royal Marine who was killed during the Iraq war.

The call for the two former leaders to be imprisoned for their part in the overthrowing of Saddam Hussein's regime comes just days before the publication of the long-awaited report on the conflict from the Chilcot inquiry.

Norwegian nurse May-Helen Forsberg was five months pregnant with Major Jason Ward's child when he died in a helicopter crash on the first night of the Iraq war.

She and her 12-year-old son, also called Jason after his father, believe the invasion was based on the untrue assertion that Saddam had access to weapons of mass destruction.

Miss Forsberg told Sky News: "I think Tony Blair and George Bush are to blame and I've always thought that. I would ask them to apologise to all those who are left behind."

Asked whether they should face some kind of punishment, she said: "What is it Jason says? They should go to jail forever."

Jason, who will not be 13 until two weeks after the Chilcot report is published, says never having met his father has always made him feel different and that when he was younger he hoped that there was a faint chance his dad could have survived the helicopter crash.

Now he says: "I just know that I'm never going to see him and that's just how it is."

Miss Forsberg recalls how the young Jason would ask if he could have a ladder to climb up to heaven to see his father.

Not surprisingly, Jason shares his mother's disdain of Mr Blair and, when asked what he would say to the former prime minister if he met him, Jason replies: "I wouldn't want to talk to him, I would just stare at him right in his eyes, for all the people that died in that war."

Miss Forsberg worries that there would be no one to look after Jason if anything happened to her, a worry enhanced by the fact that, since her son was born, she has survived cancer and a collapsed lung.

Chilcot may provide some answers as to why we went to war and how the decision was made, but none of the 2.6 million words will ease the lasting grief that pollutes the life of a young boy and his mother who lost a father and a partner respectively before the conflict was a day old.

When pressed about the Chilcot report and calls for him to go be jailed, Mr Blair told Sky News: "I think it's best we wait for Wednesday and let's just see what the report brings ... then I can respond properly."

But former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond insisted there "has to be a judicial or political reckoning" for Mr Blair's role in the conflict: "He seemed puzzled as to why Jeremy Corbyn thinks he is a war criminal, why people don't like him. [...] The reason is 179 British war dead, 150,000 immediate dead from the Iraq conflict, the Middle East in flames, the world faced with an existential crisis on terrorism - these are just some of the reasons perhaps he should understand why people don't hold him in the highest regard."